Cord of Life
by Skyblaze
Summary: Sarah experiences the fall out from people manipulating her mind, and only the Doctor can help her. Alt. Ending for 'Hand of Fear'


Cord of Life 

AUTHORS NOTES: This was written because I despise the way they got rid of Sarah at the end of 'Hand of Fear'. It seemed callous and OOC for the Doctor to me. So here we are. DW copyright BBC, All lyrics Copyright Yes and Atlantic Records. 

Changed only for a sight of sound, the space agreed.  
Between the picture of time behind the face of need 

Sarah wrapped herself miserably in the Doctors coat. Trying desperately to get some warmth back into her chilled bones. She shivered violently as she almost ran back into the relative warmth of the TARDIS console room.  
"I'll never be warm again," She complained, rubbing her hands together, "Never, ever, ever."  
"No, we're well out of that." He said, manipulating the controls to send them back into hyperspace, glancing with some relief at the monitor as Kastria disappeared from view. "Goodbye Kastria." He murmured.  
Sarah bunched her fists into her armpits, beginning to feel some warmth come back into her body.  
"Do...do you think he really is dead?" Sarah asked with some concern. She had developed certain instincts in the time she had travelled with the Doctor...and she thus disliked the idea of leaving an enemy behind her.  
"Hmm? Oh, I doubt it. Very difficult to kill."  
Sarah shook her head and attempted to bring a little levity to the situation.  
"Well, I sort of liked her...but I couldn't stand him."  
But before the Doctor could form a reply, the TARDIS rocked unsteadily.  
"Easy old girl." The Doctor said soothingly to the machine. Sarah almost smiled. I amused her how the Doctor would sometimes speak to his ship as though it were a living thing with a personality all of it's own.  
"Hm...the temperature must have affected her thermal couplings."  
"Yes, I know how she feels." Sarah said tartly. "I think Kastria must be the coldest planet in the galaxy.."  
"Oh, rubbish! The Doctor retorted, removing some of the console panels to get a better look, "I've been to much colder places."  
"Big deal," Sarah said, beginning to become annoyed, "It's all right for you. But I'm human. We're not so thick-skinned."  
But she could already tell he was no longer listening to her, he was too wrapped up in his repair work. Sarah gritted her teeth, continuing her rant despite the fact he wasn't paying attention...the only words he said to her were requests for tools.   
She kept thrusting the tools at him angrily.   
She wasn't sure why she felt so frustrated and angry. She had been in much more uncomfortable and dangerous situations with him before. It hadn't affected her this way before...and she knew that the Doctor was a strange, eccentric individual. He quite often got so wrapped up in his work that he would pay little or no attention to the human part of the equation...sometimes she speculated that was why he kept her around, to remind him that there was more to life that mathematics and machinery.   
But there was still this furious, insistent voice in the back of her head that seemed to want to rant and rave...told her that the Doctor - her best friend - was being deliberately insensitive and distant...but he wasn't...was he?   
Sarah pressed her still cold hands to her head, feeling the beginnings of a headache as conflicting thoughts crashed around in her head. She stood up abruptly.  
"I'm going to take a bath, then I'm going to have a lie down." She said shortly as she began leaving the room. She looked back and wasn't particularly surprised to see that he didn't even remove his head from under the console. She made a small noise of frustration and walked out. 

The Doctor raised his head after the third time asking Sarah for a tool...not having realised she'd left. He'd gotten used to hearing her voice as a sort of low undercurrent when he was working. It was sort of soothing, actually. In this case the repair had required almost all of his attention. But he was still surprised to see she wasn't in the console room. He frowned and did a quick recap of his memory, realised that she had left because he wasn't acknowledging her. He also realised that she hadn't sounded quite like herself. He levered himself out from under the console and went looking for her. 

Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid,  
Emotion revealed as the ocean made. 

Sarah climbed out of her bath, feeling weak. The bath had warmed her up and eased her aching muscles...but it had done nothing for the slowly growing headache, which pounded steadily in her head like a snare drum.   
She walked slowly over to her room, and fiddled with the tiny music centre controls, trying to get it to play some soft music from her own era on Earth, hoping that would help her sleep. She thought she had succeeded when she heard a high, clear, male voice begin to filter through the speakers, singing a song she though she vaguely recognised from her college days.  
Sarah collapsed inelegantly onto her bed, trying to find a position that actually felt comfortable. She closed her eyes, attempting to ignore her headache and relax.... 

Images and faces flashed across her mind...a bright sparkling pendulum swinging before her eyes as a low, insistent voice ordered her to kill the Doctor...another voice this simply repeating her one overriding purpose...Eldrad Must Live. Eldrad Must Live...Eldrad... 

She awoke quite suddenly when she felt a cool touch on her arm. She opened her heavy eyelids to find the Doctor looking at her with deep concern written in his expressive blue eyes.   
"Sarah, are you all right?" He asked. She caught her breath, feeling the alien coolness on her forearm...a light touch that somehow felt too close...too intimate. The confused cacophony of voices in her head told her to pull away from that strangely inviting touch...but she found she didn't have the strength.  
"Sarah," He repeated, "Are you all right?"   
"I..." She hesitated. Physically, she felt fine apart from the headache...but her mind... "I don't know." She confessed quietly. His cool fingers squeezed her hand reassuringly.  
"It will be all right, Sarah..." But her mind had already lost focus on what he was trying to say...she found herself falling...falling as voices swirled about her, shouting conflicting commands and...and...memories...so many memories of herself and the Doctor. The memories before that seemed pale, bleached of all colour...as though her life had only started when she met the Doctor...her Doctor with the Cheshire cat smile and those bright blue eyes that could be as piecing as a sword point, or as gentle and inviting as a shaded pool.   
  


The Doctor watched with growing alarm as he saw her conciousness fade. Something was terribly wrong. He frowned, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets, trying to think. One possibility occurred to him, and he moved quickly to one of the other TARDIS rooms, collecting a couple of small devices before returning to her bedside. He scanned her quickly, hoping he was wrong...  
But he wasn't.   
The recent attacks on her mind had done far more damage than he realised. He cursed himself for his inattention, briefly wishing he could go back and put Eldrad and Hieronymous into a De-Mat chamber so he could laugh at their atoms.   
The damage they had done had weakened the connection between her mind and her body. If it wasn't fixed, and soon, then it would continue to grow worse until eventually her mind simply shut itself down -permanently. 

He knew of several specialists in such things...and the TARDIS could take them right to their front doors...but even then there might not be enough time. They would have to get in to see them explain what was wrong. Persuade them to treat her...no, that would take entirely too long and he wasn't sure Sarah had that much time left before she suffered total mental collapse...  
That left only one option. 

I listened hard but could not see  
Life tempo change out and inside me. 

He walked quickly to her room and sat on the edge of her bed, reaching around to cradle her head in his hand.  
"Sarah," He said, softly, forcefully, "Sarah I need you to listen to me. It's very important."  
Her eyelids flickered, "Doctor?" She asked in a bleary voice.  
"Yes. Now I need you to tell me if you trust me, Sarah."  
A shadow of a smile touched her lips.  
"Of course I trust you..."  
"Good," he said, gently stroking her face. "You're very ill Sarah, and I can help you. But you need to relax and trust me, can you do that for me Sarah."  
"What...what re you going to do?"  
"Your mind has been damaged, so I need to go into your thoughts and repair it before it does you serious harm."  
"My mind?" Her eyes flicked open, "NO!" She said, suddenly and forcefully, trying to sit up. He held her down, using the least amount of pressure he could.   
"Shhh, Sarah. You said you trusted me. You know I wouldn't hurt you, and I'd never go where you don't want me to."  
That seemed to reassure her as she let out a deep sigh and seemed to go a little bit more limp, though her fever-clouded eyes were uneasy. He swallowed hard and carefully positioned his fingers against her neck, face and temple, reaching out with his thoughts to touch her essence... 

It was dark, and hot - too hot. A storm flashed in the empty sky. Lightning peppered the non-existent ground he stood upon, but did not touch him. He waited; all this was familiar to him.  
Then it came, rising, towering before him, a solid wall of stone and mortar. The barriers of her mind.  
'You shouldn't be here.' Sarah's voice spoke from behind he wall.  
"I have to be here." He Doctor said simply, "I have to help you. Let me in, Sarah. You said you trusted me."  
There was a sigh from beyond the wall, a sigh of resignation.  
He laid his fingertips against the wall, and it crumbled into dust. So, he walked in, entering her mind. He moved gently, and with infinite care, loathe to damage her psyche any more than it already was.   
He saw shadows of pain and failure hanging overcast across desolate fields, felt ripples of joy bubbling over and through him like fizzy water. Ghosts of faces, places, some hazy, half-forgotten, some remembered as sharply and clearly as a photograph.   
But then he realized there was something...wrong. There was a boundary, a line through the fields of her mind, and as he stepped across, all he had seen before suddenly seemed faded, washed-out like images in greyscale compared to the brightness and colour of what he was here.   
These memories were all sharp and clear. Not all of them were good memories, there were overtones of terror and anger in many of them, but they sparkled and shone in brilliant intensity like jewels in the corridors of her mind.  
They were all memories of him.  
The first time they met, their first adventure together, simple talks they had had together in the TARDIS, that incredible, unforgettable image of him regenerating, his voice as he gently explained something to her...Good Grief, he had never realized how much it meant to her...never seen that she watched him all the time, recording his every movement, taking in every tone and nuance of his voice...  
Then he felt something click, and the images disappeared, leaving only the sickly yellow taint of embarrassment in their wake. The Doctor frowned, wondering why Sarah had suddenly decided to hide those thoughts and memories from him...she had no secrets from him...did she? What was she going to so much trouble to hide? But, he had promised not to intrude where she did not wish him to, so he carried on his journey. 

And there it was. Stretched out, spiralling complex patterns that told the story of her existence. The golden thread of her mind that connected her to body and soul. The cord of life.   
He reached out to touch it gently, feeling its warm hum of life...but he could see and feel the damage along its length. Frayed and scarred, even burned in some places. Hurt by those who had used her, violated her mind and will.   
It was a terrible, burning shame to ever think he had been one of them...but he had always been gentle, and it could be fixed. Sarah was strong, and he could help her.  
He reached up, extending his thoughts to touch this pure golden essence...  
Then where only their had been darkness and the soft glow of the golden thread, there was a pure, white light. The light was both joy and pain, frustration and happiness and so many other things. The light enveloped him with a soft warmth like nothing he had ever known...  
'All for you...' Sarah's voice seemed to whisper, echoing.   
Finally, he understood. The thing to which Sarah clung, the reason why she stayed strong and defiant against all they faced...it was for him.   
The sound of crying echoed through the mindscape. Sarah's tears. She was there with him now, sat on the floor, sobbing.  
'I never wanted you to know...you could never feel the same, I didn't want to feel this foolish. I never wanted you to have to say it...didn't want you to send me away'  
The Doctor moved without thinking, enfolding her in his arms.  
"Sarah. My dear Sarah. I would never send you away. You mean far too much to me for that...you're my best friend, after all." He spoke soothingly, stroking her hair.  
She looked up at him devastation in her eyes.  
"But you could never feel that way for me..."  
"And why do you say that?" He said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.  
"Because I'm just human...i'm not superior like you Time Lords..."  
The Doctor sighed deeply. "Sarah, have you ever though why I travel with humans? It's your vibrancy, your life. As a species you do have some way to go yet in many ways...but at least you enjoy life for what it is...unlike the withered old fossils I used to know on Gallifrey."  
But he knew from the look in her eyes that she didn't believe him, so he elected to show her, projecting an image of his homeworld.   
She saw towering spires, crafted with a perfect symmetrical beauty reaching up towards a burnt-orange sky. Completely geometrical corridors and houses were all arranged in the most logical and efficient fashion. The entire city seemed populated by a quiet, discrete people who all seemed to move at the same slow, stately pace. No one seemed to hurry, nor did they laugh, or cry, or show any sort of deep emotion. They displayed nothing but kind of stoic dignity.  
There was an air of...age about the place. A cold, clinical aura around everything and everyone. Antiquity, custom and silent respect seemed to be the rule here. Even the younger ones had to look of age about them, as though they were deliberately trying to appear older. This was the place that the Doctor had been born and raised.  
Sarah shuddered violently.  
"Those people...they all seemed so...old!" She said.  
The Doctor nodded. "Now, what do you think living in that sort of place would be like for me?"   
Sarah frowned, trying to picture her wild, irreverent, Bohemian Doctor in that cold, sterile environment. She almost laughed at the absurdity of it.  
"Those people I saw...they'd either crush you or...or force you out."  
"There, now do you see? I may be a Time Lord, but I do have feelings. I just don't show them quite the same way humans do. I'm nothing like those dried-up old sticks you saw."  
Sarah nodded, understanding. The last of her tears gone.  
"Now then," He said, "I'm here because you were ill, and I'm trying to make you better. So, lets get on with it, shall we?"  
Sarah looked up into his deep blue eyes and knew what he wanted from her. She poured out all her love and trust, feeling him take those emotions, adding to them with his own affection and faith he began to repair her torn Life Cord. Healing her mind as he had just healed her soul. 

In the end, we'll agree, we'll accept, we'll immortalize  
That the truth of the man maturing in his eyes.  
  
When she opened her eyes, she was still in his arms.  
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss Smith." His deep voice rumbled near her ear. He turned his face to her, flashing that MegaWatt smile. She laughed softly as he gently released her, then blinked in surprise as she realised that her music was still playing, that same male voice she thought she recognised. A glance at the Doctor revealed that he, too, was listening.  
"Hmm yes, Jon Anderson. Nice chap, but a little eccentric." He identified the singer. Sarah snorted with amusement.  
"You're one to talk about being eccentric."  
The Doctor just grinned at her, "Well, at least I know you must be feeling better if you can insult me."  
There was a pause, then Sarah turned to the Doctor, her eyes now deadly serious.  
"Doctor...before I got sick I...I was going to ask you to take me home."  
The Doctor sighed and his shoulders seemed to droop slightly.  
"I know." He said, softly, almost as if steeling himself.  
"I think I've changed my mind." She smiled. Delight flashed back onto his features. He took hold of her shoulders.  
"Sarah, I don't know if I ever can return what you feel for me. We Time Lords take an awfully long time to form those kind of attachments, but if you'll be patient with me..."  
She smiled deeply, her eyes sparkling, "Doctor, I've been patent all this time, why do you think that would stop now?"  
He flashed her that smile again, "I have a feeling that my feelings for you could become very deep indeed."  
"Sounds good to me," She laughed, and kissed him lightly on the nose.  
The Doctor rubbed his nose where she had kissed it thoughtfully. "Now, correct me if I'm wrong...but shouldn't a kiss be on the lips?"  
Sarah laughed delightedly, "Doctor, I think we've got a lot to teach each other."  
They sat together in warm companionship, listening to the song that still filtered through the speakers. Both agreeing with the sentiment absolutely. 

And you and I climb, crossing the shapes of the morning.  
And you and I reach over the sun for the river.  
And you and I climb, clearer, towards the movement.  
And you and I called over valleys of endless seas. 

The End

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